


Quarter Rests

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Series: Halfway [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Apocalypse, Compilation, Deleted Scenes, Drabble Collection, End of the World, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Prompt Fic, Romance, Side Story, Terminal Illnesses, Time Skips, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2018-12-30 19:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12115590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: The CMV Mutation Pandemic swept across the globe so quickly, society as they knew it was doomed to fall. While the world came crashing down around them, Craig and Tweek tried their best to survive, and to love endlessly, in spite of it.A collection of scenes all set in the same universe as my Creek fanfiction, Halfway. Some prompts taken from the South Park Drabble Bomb. Creek. Ratings to be determined before each drabble.





	1. Clean

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! As you should probably know, Halfway is the fic resulting from my beloved viral apocalypse AU. I've spent many hours putting together this world in my head, but that's just the problem- it's all stuck in my head! I wanted to perhaps write out some "deleted scenes" or off-screen moments that take place in the same universe, same timeline as Halfway. Reading Halfway will make this more enjoyable, but it can be read on its own. Please enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This drabble uses the prompt "Clean" from the September 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Rated T for violent themes.

The sound of running water from the kitchen sink told Craig that Tweek had officially gone a step too far.

He had insisted on tidying up their home before they left, and though Craig failed to understand the point as it was unlikely they’d be returning, he’d allowed his husband this one wish, and finished packing away their clothes and valuables upstairs while he flitted about the first floor. The suitcases and duffel bags surrounding his feet overflowed with things, meaningless things that he’d toss if given the chance, but Tweek was a closeted hoarder. Once more Craig found himself cutting Tweek slack, because really, what harm could it do? If they could fit it in their four-door sedan well enough that they could drive the handful of hours to South Park without a problem, they could stand to pile on another bag or two. Besides, it wasn’t as if they were in some great hurry. Urgency was implied, of course, but there was no ominous cloud or storm siren forcing them to evacuate.

It was rather surreal, actually, the way things had played out. The movies always showed such chaos: traffic jams, people screaming, things on fire, entropy increasing. In reality, the threat of the virus was essentially silent, only evident in the news articles and by word of mouth. There were no screams in broken streets, or dumpster fires. People went cross-eyed, collapsed, lost their minds, but not in the manic way the zombie movies portrayed. Instead they went quiet, eerily similar to the blank, thoughtless face Tweek would occasionally make post-panic attack, and then they died, one by one, leaving houses empty and businesses understaffed. By the time people had realized the seriousness of the mutation, half the towns in Southern Asia were devoid of life. Then it kept going.

Craig saw a handful of his colleagues go home sick and never come back. He knew Tweek did too, and that he’d lost regulars at the cafe almost daily as it fell into full swing. Denver was collapsing in on itself, and the suburbs moving inward. Rumors of the squalor downtown directed Craig and Tweek not in but out, back to their families who they’d seen almost exclusively on holidays for years. They’d lived in this house for only two; not nearly long enough. Craig couldn’t help but feel cheated, by this damn pandemic, out of the picket fence life he and Tweek were carefully maintaining and growing in their suburban paradise. The sun still shone and the flowers still bloomed, but the people were dying, and it was time to go home.

Craig sat down at the edge of their bed and tuned in to the melody downstairs. Tweek was humming, occasionally singing, while the water pelted different dishes in different tones to harmonize with him. Tweek had a pretty voice, but it trembled, like falsetto in every note. Craig listened intently, until he decided that it had been too long, and Tweek had gotten too nervous.

He walked down the stairs with sad trepidation in his steps, shuffling down and closer to the deceivingly cheerful chirps that echoed off the emptied walls- they’d taken down all the best picture frames. He hovered just behind the door and breathed slowly, once in and once out, and stepped forward onto the white tile floor.

Tweek glanced back for only an instant, smiling at him to acknowledge his entrance, and turned back to the sink, finishing out his song quieter than before. Craig came up behind him, and in a well-practiced and comfortable motion, he slid his arms along his sudsy skin and gently took his husband’s hands, stopping his work. “Tweek,” he whispered into his ear, nuzzling his cheek into his soft hair, “they’ve already been through the dishwasher.”

Tweek stopped humming and the room went silent, only the idle sound of the refrigerator and tweeting of birds outside between them. “Well, I can’t be too sure, and y-you know,” he stumbled, speaking much too fast, “you know, I wouldn’t want to come home to a bunch of bugs and dirty dishes, and it’s not a bad thing to clean-”

“Tweek,” Craig murmured again, cupping his larger hands around Tweek’s long, knobby fingers, and he guided them to drop the plate in his grip into the basin. “Your hands.”

Tweek looked down at his bright red, splotchy skin, irritated hives that started at his wrists and wove up his hands in raised scratches and a few bloody scrapes on his knuckles. It was not the first time he had rubbed his hands raw. Cleaning was a nervous habit. Tweek was afraid.

“O-oh,” he stuttered, stretching and closing his hands into fists, and the small beads of blood that seeped from his marred knuckles ran pink with the soapy water covering and wrinkling his skin. “I just- I mean. You can’t be sure.”

“You know that’s not it.” Craig reached over to grab a paper towel and patted Tweek’s hands down carefully, barely dabbing at the sensitive areas he’d torn up. When they were sufficiently dry, he turned the faucet off, and took Tweek’s hands tightly in his own.

They didn’t speak for a while. Tweek leaned back into Craig’s chest, his head nestled naturally against his collarbone, and listened to his breaths and his heartbeat as they worked in tandem. Craig breathed in the smell of their shampoo, in love with the fact that his smelled the same, feeling his heart ache deeper with each beat at the same time. He pulled Tweek’s hands up and to his sides, and they held each other in that awkward position that felt right in the moment.

“The traffic will be thinned out in a few hours,” Craig said, and Tweek hummed in response, swaying with the motion Craig was slowly rocking him in. “We eating here before we go?”

“Are we gonna be okay? I mean, really?” Tweek asked suddenly, and Craig froze, tightening his grip on Tweek’s hands. He returned the squeeze and Craig inhaled as steadily as he could muster.

“I’m not sure,” Craig mumbled into his flaxen mess of hair, “but if we haven’t gotten sick yet, I think we’re immune.”

“So there is an immunity?”

“Mhmm.”

 

“I’m scared, Craig.” Tweek chose then to pull his hands out of Craig’s and whirl around on his feet, looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes. Craig loved those eyes, their warm honey and green tones, so full of life like this in the natural light of the setting sun.

He chose to do what he always did when Tweek looked at him like that; bring both hands up to cup his cheeks and plant a tender kiss in the middle of his forehead. His cheeks were soft under the pads of his thumbs, and he watched his blond and brown lashes flutter open upon separation. When their gazes connected, Craig gave him a wavering smile, and broke tradition by not reassuring him that everything was fine, but instead whispering, “Me too.”


	2. Adapt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the prompt 'Adapt,' which is for the September 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Please enjoy!

In all of her years, Helen had never felt so hopelessly out of control as she did now. She felt frozen, as though she were a solid marble pillar in the center of her living room and time was moving twice its regular speed. Her family was weaving around her, zipping by much too quickly for real time, like she’d hit fast-forward while they were packing up the truck that would carry them and their most precious and essential furniture a few blocks away. It was not a long way to go, but it felt like oceans, and each ghost of a wall decoration on old paint felt like another stark reminder that times were certainly changing.

They had gotten notice that all utility services would be shut down for the property one week prior. Theirs was not the only home to be targeted, as was evident by the sudden migration pattern of the outermost circles of South Park inward. Nearly all of their immediate neighbors had either passed on or moved closer to the town’s center, where power would remain on.

She sighed, allowing her normally perfectly straight shoulders to sag with the defeated motion. Though she felt exhausted, her mind felt hopelessly immortal, and was something she could only dream to turn off in the quietest hours of the universe. Instead it kept her up at night, asking her where she would get her pills refilled, what would happen if she had to stop taking them, and if she would be okay.

As if reading her mind, Richard startled Helen by coming up behind her to hug around her middle, burying his nose in the ends of her hair that tickled her shoulders. “Darling, you’re staring.” His voice was so loving, so mellow and gentle, that Helen had never stopped growing butterflies in her chest when he murmured to her ear alone. “Did you take your medicine?”

“Yes, dear,” she sighed. She relaxed into his hold, placing her hands over his where they rested over her stomach. She remembered standing like this with a swollen belly decades ago, only a few years before moving into this very house. Her baby was fully grown now, though, and was set to arrive home in only a handful of hours, but it wouldn’t be to their home; it would be to the Tuckers’. In a way unjustifiable, this disturbed her.

“I know it’s quite a change,” Richard whispered, “but we should try to embrace it as a fresh start. Fresh, like the savory, slow-roasted blend of-”

“Oh dear,” Helen cut him off, fighting off hysterics, “our coffee business is long gone. Hearing you speak of it is upsetting.”

Richard paused, then pulled away from her with hesitant, disappointed slowness. She knew that it hurt him when she said these things, but it hurt her to hear them now too. She hoped he understood.

Helen twisted on one kitten heel to face him and wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling momentarily sixteen and foolishly in love again. The movement reminded her of junior prom. Oh, she’d been approached by so many suitors, so many hopeful boys with hungry, wolfish grins, but it was this one with a mumbling voice and a mouth full of odd metaphors that she had chosen. She was grateful for her choice.

To further the memory, and cement the suspicion that he was recalling the same one, Richard took her hand and slid it carefully up to the side, slipping the other around her waist and beginning a rocking slow dance. The floorboards beneath them creaked and protested, but they hadn’t a care for it. No, Helen didn’t care at all, because if the floor was to break beneath them, it would help make their move feel a tiny bit more justified, and so she pressed down with her feet a little harder than usual. Instead of placing her hand on his shoulder in traditional form, she cupped it against his cheek, and relished in the feeling of his prickly chin hair scratching at her palm as they shifted together. Like this, Helen could forget the other three people moving around them in the house.

“I don’t want to say goodbye to this place, Richard,” she mumbled into his neck, and he inhaled deeper than normal in what was likely a suppressed sigh. He hummed on the exhale.

“I don’t either, my love, but we must.” She hummed back, and they rocked in circles in the center of their mostly-empty living room. Helen closed her eyes and pressed one ear to his chest, listening to his heart beat steadily on and his lungs fill deeply with air. Always so mindful, so soft he was to her, and it made her so emotional. Before she knew it, her eyes had welled up with tears, and they began to fall despite her silent protests.

Richard didn’t say anything, but he did bring his hand up from her waist to brush the tears from her cheek, and it acted as a quiet acknowledgement of her suffering.

“The Tuckers are so lovely to be taking us in, aren’t they?” she said, speaking mostly to herself as she composed herself, but Richard still nodded.

“I can’t say as I’d expected such a turn, but I’m not disappointed. They’ve been nothing but sweet to us. Sweet, like the all-natural sugar we supply at Tweak bros- ah, right.” Helen giggled quietly at his unending quips, and he ran his fingers through her hair, looking down at her with a gentle smile. “Sweet, like the honey-brown seas in your eyes and roasted chestnut hair.”

She rolled her eyes, but she knew that he knew she was kidding. “You are an insufferable starving artist. How we made it so long, I’ve no clue.”

“That’s a lie, darling,” he murmured, pressing a soft kiss in the center of her forehead, “because you would have left me long ago if you didn’t find charm in me. You had many more boys just as eager to take you out.”

“Oh, but I didn’t choose many more boys now, did I?” Helen teased, and Richard shook his head, the smile never leaving his lips. “I chose your little wisp of a self in high school and I watched it grow into a man worth ten times as much as any one of those tiresome boys up my skirt.”

“Was I not also reaching up there myself?” he murmured, his tone turning sultry, and Helen was only vaguely aware of Tricia Tucker exclaiming exaggerated disgust as they chuckled and touched noses.

“How I love you, Richard,” she gushed, the smile evident in her tone, and they stopped their moving to stare directly into each other’s eyes. His brilliant green color, the one passed partially down to their son, still sparkled behind the wrinkles that had piled onto his face over the years.

“And I, you, Helen,” he replied, and with one gentle, chaste kiss to her lips the spell was broken, and the commotion of a move restarted around them. Tricia and Laura were carrying out boxes of picture frames side-by-side. Though her heart ached to watch them leave her front door, she was thankful to have a place to take them. They would adjust, of course, to broadened communal living; of that she had no doubt. She just wished it could be under other circumstances.

Helen stepped out of Richard’s arms, and took one deep, steadying breath with her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she placed her hands on her hips and popped her shoulders back. “What more is there?” she asked, but Thomas appeared from around the corner to shake his head.

“The house ‘s cleared, Helen,” he replied gruffly, “we’re ready to roll out when you are.”

Helen took one last look at this place where she had raised her beloved son. Though they had moved here four years after he was born, it was as close to a lifetime as he would get, and she had no doubt Tweek would miss this place too. He was more like her than Richard, after all. He got sentimental in the same unfortunate ways.

“We can come back to tend to the roses,” Richard said, and as though they were the magic words, Helen nodded. He managed to make things feel alright when they were irredeemably wrong, which was just another way that she loved him. She loved him so many ways.

“I’ll be honored to share your kitchen, Laura,” she said with a smile, looking to the woman beside her daughter in the foyer, and Laura let out a good-natured chuckle.

“You’ll use it more than me. I’m hardly a cook.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Tricia drawled, and Laura smacked her playfully on the back of the head. “Hey!” The flipped each other off, and though the exchange was odd from the outside, Helen and Richard both laughed.

“Please, tell me that won’t be a habit we pick up,” Helen playfully chided, and Thomas smirked.

“If my son can pass it to your son, anything’s possible,” he said, and then, as though it meant nothing at all, they filed out.

Helen turned back one more time to look at her front door. The welcome wreath remained; she’d refused to take it. Without it, she’d argued no one would know the property was theirs, and that a family had once lived happily within that house’s walls. There were not many other ways she could think of to mark her memories besides the promise of tending to the roses in the spring, and so she left it to rustle in the wind when the gusts pressed too closely against the door’s refined wood. Only the ghosts would hear it scratch its surface from the dining room table.

The next time Helen saw her front door, it was as she rushed to the hospital emergency room with two of her most precious people fading in her arms. Roses had never been so far from her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: So about that Creek episode, huh????


	3. Fade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the prompt 'Fade,' which is for the September 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Major warnings for described character death.

Laura could remember vividly the last moments of her mother’s life. It was peaceful, in a small hospice room surrounded by her brother and his eldest kids (Craig had been too young at the time), and a small picture frame on her bedside table that acted as a stand-in for her late husband- her father. She was asleep for the majority of her last hours, which was likely for the best. When she passed, it was with hardly a whisper. They had wept together and gone home.

This was nothing like those memories.

Instead of peace and warmth, the room was positively assaulted with the stench of panic, desperation, and dread. There was shouting and crying and constant bustling of nurses and doctors in and out, but with always at least one person in the room. They were waiting for death, she could tell, but not in the gentle way they had done for her mother. It could be silently agreed upon that it was not properly his time to rest.

She was wailing in the corner of the room. Again, Laura was reminded of her own experiences with death, and more specifically the passing of her father. Her mother had been upset, weepy and exhausted, but resigned. She had seemed a little more ready. Helen had not been given that chance.

Worse yet, she was alone.

Tweek was lying in the next room over. He was in better shape than his father, but not by much, and though Craig was notoriously good at keeping calm, the wild in his eyes told Laura that her baby was most certainly not calm. Her chest ached, knowing that his family was falling apart; although she cared very much for her relatives by marriage, it was simply not the same as if both her husband and her father-in-law were to grow seriously ill. She knew it must be torturous, though even moreso for the woman being ignored as she fell apart in a room full of helpless hospital personnel.

In a sudden moment of clarity, Richard stirred, his sunken eyes splitting open just enough to catch his pupils darting back and forth. Helen surged forward, and several nurses jolted forward to grab at her. However, they all paused before doing so, sharing looks of grave mutual understanding, and one of them reinforced the importance of her carefulness around the machines that were currently keeping him alive. Otherwise, they let her go.

“Richard! Oh darling, Rich-” she gasped through a sob “-my love! Can you hear me? Oh darling, my- oh,” she swallowed thickly between near-hyperventilation, and Laura felt her heart aching. Her eyes welled up with tears at the sight, at Helen’s desperate passionate pawing at Richard’s pale cheek, Richard’s tired but attentive eyes, the way Helen’s legs were quaking beneath her. She looked so frightened and frazzled, and nothing at all like the composed, oddly elegant woman Laura had come to know over the years. This was a woman who was watching her life unravel when she had thought herself safe not three days ago.

Richard was struggling to speak. Helen begged them to pull off his oxygen mask, if only for a moment, to be able to hear his words. The nurses cautioned her for the risk it could cause to his health, but she insisted, “I don’t care, I don’t care, oh please,” and once more, they relented. Laura had a strong sinking feeling that they knew a lost cause when they saw one.

Helen pulled the mask delicately from his mouth and let it rest at his chin, leaning forward so that her ear was practically pressed to his lips. Laura saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear his voice. It appeared that Helen did, however, because her eyes widened and she let out a loud hiccup.

“Oh, don’t say that, my love, don’t say that! Oh, I love you too. Don’t say farewells, please,” she pleaded, but Richard’s lips upturned in the most serene smile Laura had ever seen, and he whispered a few more hoarse words into the shell of her ear. Helen sobbed, squeezed her eyes shut, and let her head bear weight over his chest. It moved with the shaky breaths that rattled in her husband’s lungs. “As long as your heart beats, you’ll be alright, darling. Oh, hang on for me, please-”

Before she could finish, Richard’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he began to violently seize.

“Richard!” Helen wailed, and the nurses sprung into action. One attempted to wrangle Helen to push her back so that they could work, but she was hardly successful. Laura suddenly knew her purpose quite strongly. She reached forward, and she latched her arms around Helen’s waist.

“No! No!” she cried, but Laura pulled her back with all her strength. Thomas showed up beside her in an instant, and together, they took her by the shoulders and held her in place. Helen clawed at the air in a desperate attempt to get free while Richard seized in the gurney. His vitals caused several different alarms to sound from several different machines. The nurses and doctors were yelling over them, essential information that meant nothing to Laura’s ears. She accidentally made eye contact with one of the nurses, and the chilling look of fear in her eyes made Laura’s stomach drop.

“Helen,” she tried, in her most soothing possible voice, but Helen continued to cry and thrash. “Helen, you need to let the doctors work. They can’t help if they can’t get to him. Helen.”

Thomas, bless his quick thinking and soft heart, reached for Helen’s hand and squeezed it tight, and that was all it took for Helen to stop trying to break free and instead threaten to collapse where she stood in a mess of tears and despair. Laura took her other hand, but kept one arm wrapped around her waist to keep her standing. She sagged in their arms, reduced to broken sobs that somehow managed to ring thunderously over all the machines and quick speaking and movement.

Eventually, Helen became too tired to even try to stand, and with Thomas and Laura’s help, they slowly slid down against the wall of the hospital room, together. Laura did something she hadn’t done since she was sixteen; she prayed. She asked God for forgiveness, for the safe passage of Richard into heaven, and for Tweek’s strength. She asked for help from the deity she had long since forgotten, because no time had ever felt more appropriate to beg to God than now for His guidance. As soon as Helen began to get ahold of herself, the beeping of the machines turned into a long, flat buzz.

She tried to jump to her feet, screaming, but Laura held fast, and so did Thomas. He held out his free hand for Laura to take, and Laura squeezed it so tightly she worried she’d hurt him.

After her first initial outburst, Helen turned strangely robotic. Her eyes were still wide and leaking, but they looked vacant, like she wanted to believe the moment was a dream. The doctors started to slow down. One of them looked over, only his eyes visible under his face shield and above his mask, but they expressed so much that words weren’t needed. Richard was gone, and they had done all they could. Laura’s breath caught in her throat, and she hoped to God that Helen hadn’t seen his pitying, distraught eyes. She wished she hadn’t seen, either.

Laura adjusted her position to Helen’s side, and without a word, she rested her head on Helen’s shoulder, hugging her more gently around the middle with her eyes closed. Thomas kept squeezing her hand. She started to cry noisily again. Eventually, the doctor with the same sad eyes as before walked over to meet them.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, muffled even further by his face mask, and Helen let out a subdued shriek. Laura tried to calm her by running her fingers through her hair, but it didn’t seem to matter. She supposed that if any coping skill were to fail, it would be in a moment like this, while Helen watched the life fade from her husband’s body.

“Can we have a few moments?” Thomas asked, and Laura was surprised to hear a quaver in his tone, his beady eyes glistening as much as her own. Helen could not be reached, consoling a distant concept, and she doubled over on herself on the dirty floor, only held upright by Laura’s waning hold around her. Her shoulders shook while the doctors filed out per their request, until the room echoed only with the gasping and shaking breaths of their three living bodies.

“Helen,” Laura tried gently, rubbing her back with a massaging palm, “would you like to say goodbye before they take h-”

“Don’t let them take him!” She sat straight up suddenly, her eyes wild and bloodshot beyond belief, and she staggered to her feet. This time, she let her go. “He’s just fine, he’s going to be just- oh, God,” Helen whimpered. She shuffled slowly forward, her breath held and her hand outstretched to cradle his chin.

Richard’s eyes had been closed and his oxygen mask had been removed- likely to make him appear more peaceful in death. Death. It gripped Laura’s heart with ice, and her eyes threatened to spill over at the realization that Richard Tweak was dead. Dead.

“Richard..?” Helen whispered. She very slowly and carefully put her ear to his chest, like she’d done twenty minutes prior. The stillness of the moment was so crushing, knowing that his lungs would no longer expand beneath her loving embrace. Helen stood like that for a long while.

They were stunned from the thick silence of the room when Craig came bursting in. He looked out of breath, but relieved. “He’s gonna be okay, they got the swelling down and-”

He faltered. His eyes put two and two together, Laura saw. Then, when composure settled on his face, his jaw set and his brow determined, he walked up to Helen’s side and began to rub her back. He whispered to her, something Laura couldn’t hear, and she erupted again, collapsing into Craig’s waiting arms and moaning. Craig’s face was softened, but strong, and Laura had never felt so proud of him.

“Thank you, oh, thank you,” Helen was saying between shuddering breaths, and Laura realized that she was not weeping out of despair anymore. “Oh, thank God, thank you,” she gasped, “Thank you for saving my baby,” and Craig hushed her, petting her tangled hair gently as though he was consoling a child. It was only on closer inspection Laura could spot the wetness on his cheeks too; he was mourning for Richard while his mother-in-law thanked the Lord for her son. It suddenly became too much to witness, and Laura looked away. She locked eyes with Thomas, and he embraced her, the warmth of his big arms keeping the chill of the hospital air at bay.

“Come on, Ma,” Craig whispered in Helen’s ear, and she emerged from his shoulder to blink blearily at the room around her, as though she’d forgotten where she was in her hysterics. Craig looked at Thomas, looked at Laura, and they met in the middle.

There, in that vacant hospital room, with the empty vessel of a dear friend, husband, and father-in-law beside them, they held each other tightly. Laura had both Thomas and her son’s hands in her own, and they created a shield with all three of their bodies, as though their barrier could protect Helen from the evils that threatened to eat her alive. Her crying slowed, her sniffling quieted, and with time, she relaxed into their hold. They took turns caring for her, rubbing her back and smoothing down her hair, but kept her close, safe and warm. Laura hoped that if Richard’s soul had yet to leave this room, he would be comforted knowing that his wife was in safe hands.

They migrated to Tweek’s hospital room, where he lay unconscious and hooked up to many of the same machines as his father had. He was alright though, according to the doctor- they were able to alleviate the swelling in his brain before it compromised his health completely, but not without a risky craniectomy. There was a large plastic helmet around his head. His hair would take a while to regrow to its characteristic mane.

Helen did not speak again for seven days. She was silent through every meal, the funeral, the discussions with her and Craig over her son’s health care: everything. Even when her voice returned, it was a whisper, a shell of its former self, meek and frail. She had asked if it was alright to touch her son.

Helen’s voice never truly returned to her. The only time it came closest was one twilight on the back deck that Laura accidentally overheard, where she privately spoke aloud to Richard. She laughed and shared the plots of books and dreams and lived in a temporary fantasy world that Laura couldn’t bring herself to tear away, and so she backed away from the screen door, to begin to cook dinner without her input, and wait for when Helen was ready to return to Earth. 


	4. Study

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for the prompt 'Study,' which is for the September 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. Shameless creek fluff. Enjoy!

Craig groaned for what had to be the millionth time in fifteen minutes.

He dropped his pencil to his paper, watched it tumble over the poorly printed half-filled lines for a few moments, then dropped his head into his hands. He let his back contort and pressed his palms to his forehead, rubbing it vigorously while he continued to whine and moan at the cluster headache assaulting the back of his eyeballs. God, he hated this class with the fiercest of passions.

“Craig, you’re starting to sound like a motorboat. That means you’re done for the night.”

Craig lifted his head to the sight of his fiancé in the entryway, one hand on his popped out hip and the other propping him up against the door frame. Craig rubbed at his eyes again and glanced back down at his notes, his eyes darting back and forth between his messy scrawling and his overfilled textbook. He sighed.

“There’s a test tomorrow. I can’t just quit.”

Tweek frowned in the way that scrunched up half his nose, and he crossed the office room to take Craig’s face in his soft, slightly wet hands. That was when Craig realized what he had on.

“Woah, you’re baking? Like for real baking?” he asked, and Tweek nodded. “You never pull out the apron. That’s next level shit. What are you doing?”

“My coworker’s pregnant; I-I figured she’d like something sweet.” Tweek scratched at Craig’s chin with both hands, and he hummed with pleasure, leaning into his touch and smiling contently. God, he loved when he did that. He felt a bit like an animal when he did it, but it felt too good for him to care.

“Do I get something?” he asked, and he opened his eyes for only a moment before squeezing them shut again, the overhead light overwhelming his vision and sending spikes of pain straight into his skull. Tweek rubbed a sympathetic hand over his head when he grunted.

“I always make extras.”

“For very serious taste tests only, I know.”

Tweek shuddered and laughed. “I can’t be sending away unsatisfactory gifts. We have to make extra sure everything came out well!”

“Tweek, babe, your baking is literally always perfect.” Craig chanced opening his eyes just a crack, and he slowly opened them to reveal Tweek’s pleased grin. He swatted at Craig’s arm.

“You should always check still! You never know,” Tweek fussed, and Craig laughed at him, tugging at the edge of his well-loved and years-old apron. “Why are you even protesting? You’re getting free cupcakes out of it.”

“It’s fun to get you riled up,” Craig said, and his wry smile earned him another smack to the shoulder and a noise of obviously faked frustration. Craig then took hold of the apron at his hips, where the ties disappeared behind his back, and he tugged him down, forcing Tweek’s head to bow low enough for him to snag a peck on his lips. He quickly brought his hands up to his cheeks to hold him at that level, and Tweek made another noise of protest.

“You could have asked,” Tweek muttered, but he leaned in for another kiss anyway, and Craig struggled to return it with his lips upturned into a grin. “I wonder if your ego will get worse, once you have that fancy degree hanging up on the wall.”

“Oh, you know it. It’ll be like always having a powerpoint presentation available to point at for evidence when I talk about how great and smart I am.”

Tweek snorted, squinting his eyes and snickering, and Craig’s heart melted. “Maybe you’ll make enough money for us to get out of this shit apartment.” As if to make a point, the floor creaked underneath his shifting feet, and Craig’s attention flickered to the ugly water stain on the corner of the ceiling.

“The student loans will mean a downgrade, realistically,” Craig teased, and Tweek groaned as he ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Nah. I’ll get a fancy job testing water samples somewhere in the suburbs, and you know what I’m gonna do next?”

Craig got to his feet, forgetting entirely about his study session and his headache, and instead slipped his arms around Tweek’s waist at the same time that Tweek’s arms curled around his shoulders. They fit so perfectly this way, and they moved so easily into place like human puzzle pieces. “What are you gonna do next?” Tweek asked, his voice going soft and raspy with the gentle glowing smile Craig adored on his face, and he tugged him even closer by the small of his back.

“I’m gonna buy you a whole goddamn house, with a pretty picket fence and roses just like your old ones.” Tweek hummed, his smile growing wider, and he buried his face in Craig’s neck. He continued. “It’ll have white siding and a red front door-”

“Blue,” Tweek interjected, and Craig chuckled.

“Alright, a blue front door, with some stained glass in the window.” Tweek nodded in agreement. “We’ll have wooden floors in the living room and carpet upstairs, and a big king-size bed to fit all our pets because I  _ know _ you, and we will be picking up strays all over the place.”

“Aw, don’t you dare peg that on me Craig Tucker!” Tweek pressed an accusing finger into his chest. “You fucking love animals. Don’t lie to yourself.”

“Regardless, we’ll probably have like, four.” Tweek laughed and shook his head, but he didn’t reply, and Craig took it as the opening he needed to carry on. “Anyway, we’ll have a walk-in closet, and a master bathroom so we don’t have to share it-”

Tweek looked up quickly, nearly bruising Craig’s jaw. “So you  _ do _ want kids!”

Craig opened his mouth but of course, nothing came out, and so he stuttered out the best reply he could think of: “uh, probably. Maybe? Yeah. Yes.”

Tweek’s smile grew even wider, a feat he so rarely achieved, and he pressed a kiss hard into his jaw. “You’ll be such a good dad,” Tweek murmured, and the nervous butterflies in Craig’s stomach flew out his throat and buzzed on his lips.

“Yeah?” he breathed back, and Tweek took his cheek in his hand and tilted it down to force him to look at him. The warmth in his eyes made Craig’s breath leave him completely, and his chest constricted at the reminder of just how lovely they were.

“Yes,” Tweek whispered, kissing him slow and sweet, and Craig felt his heart explode.

They did nothing but look at each other for a long pause. No words were spoken but instead were whispered in the colors that painted their eyes, their cheeks, their delicate skin. Craig didn’t know how long he stared at his beautiful smile before he felt okay enough to move, and he used that ability to move to place his hands on each side of Tweek’s face to kiss him again, even slower and sweeter than the last. Tweek took longer to let his auburn lashes flutter open again.

“I’m gonna buy you a house, baby,” Craig whispered, and Tweek giggled so quietly he nearly missed it.

“You’re a dork,” he teased, but he could hear the joy in his voice all the same. “I love you.”

Craig brushed his thumb over his cheekbones, back and forth in a simple motion that spoke more than his words ever could. He could never express just how much he loved him, not really. It didn’t stop him from muttering, “I love you too,” over his lips before a last kiss to seal the promise.

The next day, Craig briefly wondered if continuing to study would have improved his grade, but he determined that a grade letter lower than usual was worth every second he fell further in love with Tweek’s brilliant soul. He still got an A.


	5. Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This drabble uses the prompt "Change" from the September 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb.

He wanted most to be an optimist, but life was truly, honestly, not supposed to have gone this way. 

Clyde liked to go with whatever life threw at him. It was something his father had taught him, to live in every moment, and something even further cemented by the passing of his mother. With life so fragile and short, he found meaning in taking what he was given in stride, and smiling at the obstacle courses he’d been subjected to in his many years since. This obstacle was proving hard to smile at, though, and in fact Clyde was finding it very difficult to smile at all, even in the metaphorical simulations buried deep in his brain.

His knees were achy from a day spent standing at work. They popped and ground together like they needed oiling, and he shook out his legs between steps for good measure as he dragged his feet out of the lab and toward the locker rooms. He hung up his lab coat- his name wasn’t even embroidered on it. It was printed on a sticker in the back. In this hospital, he was nameless.

He’d studied meteorology, actually. He had only just finished his degree by the time the virus began its destruction, and the cookie crumbled in such a way that when he ended up back at home, the hospital had dragged him in. They were taking anybody who knew anything about biology and was immune. He’d taken one or two courses in college, and they figured that was enough. The rest, he improvised and figured out along the way. It wasn’t where he wanted to end up- not by a long shot- but he’d do anything that might help. Nobody really cared about the weather, at that point.

South Park was always the town you ran away from. You left high school, found somewhere, anywhere else, and bolted for the door. Clyde had never really been a fan of that mentality. He didn’t want to run away; not when his father would be left behind. He didn’t like feeling like his father was completely alone in that shell of a house, made even emptier by the old picture frames that showed a family frozen in time more than a decade ago. They were all so dusty.

When Clyde came back to that empty house, he came back alone. His wife, a woman he adored whom he’d met in college, was buried in a small-town cemetery beside her parents in a family plot. It didn’t make sense for him to stay in their apartment when everything in it reminded him of her, and he packed up his essentials the day after the funeral and went back home. All throughout the funeral, his father kept patting him on the back, as though it was the only way he could ever express his sympathy and total understanding. He would never say he was glad Clyde didn’t have kids, but Clyde knew he was thinking it.

He pulled the lock out of his locker door, and took out his outdoor sneakers and carrier bag, slinging the sack over one shoulder before sitting down on the bench that ran along the middle of the row. He sighed, the bottom of his lungs feeling heavy and weighted. He overextended his arms to pull his muscles apart from their knotted up mess in his back, stiff from a day of staring into machines and computer screens. When the good feeling of the stretch faded, he sagged and hunched his shoulders, arms on both knees that were too tired to tie his laces.

God, he felt so old now. His father picked on him, for acting like a grandpa in his twenties, but it was wearing on him too. The Donovan men were very good at joking, and not very good at talking. He missed being the kid looking for laughs, ripped on by his friends in good fun and screwing around on the playground. Whenever he had to walk past the school yard, he had to look away now; the playground just looked so wrong to be barren and falling apart. Part of him still hoped the world would go back to normal, but part of him told him it would never be the same.

The door to the locker room swung open from around the corner. His attention snapped his head up, straightened his back, hoped it was who he thought it was. The squeaky sneaker footsteps walked along the aisle blocked by a row of lockers, and then their maker turned the corner into Clyde’s lane.

“Craig!” he exclaimed, a smile growing widely at the sight of a familiar stone face. Craig froze for just a moment, making brief eye contact, and he grunted in greeting before looking back down and stopping in front of his locker opposite Clyde’s. “Hey man,” Clyde continued, feeling a slight sting in his chest but forging onward anyway, “how’s it going?”

“Fine,” Craig replied tersely, and Clyde’s smile started to wane, try as he might to stop it. No, he wanted that smile so much. He wanted to be happy. He wanted his friend to talk to him, look at him with any expression besides annoyance or complete neutrality. He wanted a lot of things. With every day that passed, it seemed less likely he’d get any of them.

“How’s the fam?” Clyde asked, finally breaking his eye contact with Craig’s back to start lacing up his sneakers with new energy. Craig grunted again; Clyde’s smile lost another millimeter. His dimples started to fade.

“My dad was looking to part with some old junk you might wanna take a look at,” Clyde tried again, “friends and family discount? I mean, we’re not selling it or anything, but you can take first pick if you like.”

“Why would I want old junk you planned on throwing away in the first place?” Craig said, his voice somehow even flatter than usual, and Clyde officially lost the wind in his sails, slumping forward and cowering like a goddamn idiot. God, he was so stupid. Of course he wouldn’t. The air between them grew tense and awkward.

“Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point,” Clyde chuckled nervously, but when he realized he had nothing else to say, he let out the air he’d taken into his lungs to speak. Craig continued to unpack his things from his locker silently. He was hyper aware of the buzzing of the overhead lights, one of them sounding close to breaking and plunging them into the dark. It didn’t, though, and Craig left without another word.

Alone, with nothing but the ambient noise of a basement locker room to keep him company, Clyde mumbled, “Have a good one.” He didn’t like to let Craig leave without saying it. Maybe it hurt less if Craig wasn’t there to hear him. If he didn’t hear him, he couldn’t intentionally ignore him.

Clyde felt alone a lot, now.

He sang a song to himself as he walked home. He was never very good at singing, but it still felt good, and so he did. The empty streets made him feel much less self-conscious too, and the whistling winter winds provided an echo chamber to make any noise he wanted. Though it was an open street, in plain sight and broad daylight, it still felt private, and so he prayed.

“Hey, mom,” he started, putting a smile on his face for her. When Clyde prayed, he didn’t pray to God. “I’m pretty sad today.” He let the words hang around him, the words feeling wrong slipping past a grin. It helped though, to let it out, and so he did. “I’ve been sad a lot. I hope that’s okay.” Another pause. There was a snow pile that had caved into the walkway that was perfect for kicking, and so he did.

“This sucks, mom,” he admitted. “I wish Craig would talk to me. I wish people could smile more again. Am I not trying enough?” He used the silence as an answer. He turned the corner to start walking down his street. “I dunno. I think I’m doing okay. I think I’m proud of me.” The cold scratched his cheeks extra raw, and he shivered. “I hope Tweek gets better. I miss him, and Craig.”

The wind started scratching at his eyes too. “I miss Sarah,” he whispered. “I miss you. Dad misses you, too.” His next footstep hovered over its place, his will to move forward shattered. His shivering got worse. He doubted it was much warmer at home, the heat having been cut off over a month ago. There wasn’t much difference standing out here than standing in there, and maybe he wasn’t ready to say hello to his father yet. Maybe he needed his mom first.

“Please help them, mom,” he pleaded. Wetness made the wind hurt worse. “Craig needs your help more than I do. Help him first.” For some reason, the silence after his monologue felt much lonelier than usual. He wasn’t ready to fall apart yet though, not yet. He’d gotten this far. He’d watched his wife die, for God’s sake. He could handle his friend not speaking to him.  _ ‘It’s more than that, though,’ _ the devil in his ear replied.

He stood there for a long time, the wind moving around him untroubled by his presence. His fingers grew numb the longer he stared at the snow, which was making his eyes water. It was the wind and the snow making them leak. He needed to believe that, or he wasn’t going to make it through.

“I love you,” he finally said, unsure who he was speaking to, and with resigned urgency prompted only by the stinging on his cheeks and in his fingers and toes, he trudged on.


	6. Tassels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He sometimes wished this virus would hurry up and drag him to hell already. Maybe then his family could find some peace for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fill for the prompt "Scarf" for the November 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb. 
> 
> As it has been a while, reminder that reading the original fic, Halfway, is strongly encouraged but not required if you just want a dose of angst. It is rated T only for the darker themes involved- there's nothing graphic about it in any typical sense. Enjoy!

There were tassels on it, Tweek could remember. 

There wasn’t much that he could recall, with a brain so scrambled one could have it with breakfast, but tassels, they were there. In the memory, that was.

Sometimes, it was the most insignificant things that would pop into his head. Lunch would come around and he’d remember his mother’s cell phone number, or he’d shut out his lamp and remember that he kissed Craig three times on their first date. They were odd facts, things to consider equivalent to the spare buttons discarded in a drawer, but the desk itself was nearly bare.

He didn’t like them. In a way, Tweek felt he’d much rather forget everything than have to remember little bits and pieces of a life that felt so distant but looked so recent in the eyes of his saddened, burdened loved ones. He hated to see pain in those eyes, the ones he had memorized but still noticed new things about, except he wasn’t sure if they were new or simply forgotten. Tweek knew his head was running on empty, sputtering through its last few drops of gasoline until he started to burn up the engine, and soon he would explode, surely.

For now, though, the image of this deep navy blue scarf blinded his focus. It was blue, yes, but was there perhaps some yellow too? Tweek couldn’t remember.

Craig was there for lunch again. He seemed to come less lately, and Tweek wished he would just say why instead of making him stew in the truth without confirmation of his insecurities. The voice in the back of his head seared his skull with the fact that Craig just couldn’t bear to come as much as before because his lacking memory made it painful to witness. Tweek knew that, understood that, but wished Craig would just admit that it was the reason instead of pull something false like the ever present ‘too much work’ excuse. What work could he be doing besides cleaning the shop? Was it the shop he worked for now?

Sometimes Tweek felt as though he was tilting on the axis of one universe with visions of another on the other side that he could only glance at in passing. He wasn’t always sure he was in the right universe. When he tried to guess, he mostly got disappointed, disconnected eye contact, which only stayed for a moment of raw emotion before either glancing away or returning to their steely resolve to be strong. Being strong was such a strange concept to adopt as a bystander, Tweek thought, because how exactly were they being strong? All they needed was the decency to not look as though they were staring a ghost in the face, a shell of a man they once knew, but he knew that was impossible for most. The only people who looked at him least like that (because sometimes even they failed) were his mother and Craig, and his mother hadn’t been well enough to visit in months.

Oh, that scarf- it had lovely, bouncy little tassels, but what color, what color?

“You’re such a mess,” Craig teased, and if Tweek didn’t know better he would have responded with  _ Yes, I am, I know, _ but Craig wasn’t so cruel as to make those generalizations out loud. He licked his thumb and brushed it at the edge of Tweek’s left cheekbone, where he’d accidentally swiped a swatch of paints without noticing earlier. Ah, it made sense then, of course, though he was a mess in that sense too. He wished he would just  _ say _ it.

“Say what?” Craig asked, and Tweek realized he’d said it out loud, and now he had a husband staring at him expectantly, a little nervously, who needed explanation for his delusions.

“I’m a mess,” he insisted, and Craig’s eyes got sad, the way he thought Tweek wouldn’t notice, but he’d known and loved him over a decade, and no amount of memory loss could erase that particular skill.

“You’re not,” Craig said, and Tweek politely, silently disagreed.

When he left, Tweek watched him go all the way until his door finally swung shut on him, a few steps before he took a left turn back to the lab, as usual. There were some things Tweek remembered, like that, which he couldn’t explain or justify. He knew which way Craig came around the corner, but didn’t know many other, more important things. He sometimes wished this virus would hurry up and drag him to hell already. Maybe then his family could find some peace for once.

A nurse stepped into his room with a cart of medication and lotion and Tweek remembered blue tassels, but not what they were on. What had blue tassels? There was yellow, too, somewhere in his mind, like a sunburst amongst a sapphire sea. He remembered light, fluffy snowflakes sticking to yellow yarn.

A hat, he recalled, proudly and happily, it was a hat! The hat he wore in elementary school, so long ago that it was when they first became friends, and it was such an ancient memory that it was rather impressive, really. It had such a funny poof ball at the top that was so top heavy it started to flatten into more of a pancake than a ball the longer he owned it. Craig loved that hat so much. The memory made Tweek smile.

As the sun went to sleep and the stars began to blink to life in the twilight, Tweek nodded off in an early evening nap. He daydreamed so much lately, about life as it was, as it could have been, but mostly of what his husband was doing. Was he happy? Was he healthy? There was only so much he could do chained to a hospital bed and not knowing for certain made him anxious at times. He wanted to know he was safe where his forgetful brain could not do the same. Tweek knew that the more he forgot, the less he was a safe place for Craig to go, and it shattered him.

There was still a smudge of paint on his hand that he tried to rub off but struggled with. He scraped at it with his thumb and admired its midnight blue, how lovely it looked in the sunset that haloed his room. It breathed warmth into his mural so that its dark tones hardly felt dark, but still held the same richness. It was a lovely blue.

A scarf, Tweek recalled; there was a scarf the same soft blue as this one. It matched an old hat he’d long retired after he grew too big to fit it on his head. That dark blue would always remind him of Craig. It had hints of yellow, too, just like the chullo he’d worn through sixth grade, long before they were in love.

Were there tassels, though? Tweek couldn’t remember.


	8. My Book of Memories - Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Book of Memories - by Tweek Tucker, 2017
> 
> Craig:
> 
> The contents of this book are for me more than anything, but I’m sure that you’ll like it once I’m long gone and unable to protest. :P It’s important to me that I don’t forget the most important parts of my life, and it happens to be that you make up most of them. I’m sure you’re pretty smug about that.   
> I know it’s probably weird to address this to you when I’m still alive and I don’t know when my time will come, but it just feels right. Hopefully you’ll be able to read these someday and smile. I just want you to keep smiling. 
> 
> I love you,  
> Tweek, forever your sunshiny star ✰

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an entry for the February 2018 SP Drabble Bomb for the prompt "Denial," though it also works for "Confession." I don't have much time to chatter on, so I hope you enjoy! If you can't gather from the summary, this is to be read like a journal entry.

**Winter, 2007**

I have a hard time recalling a point in my life where I wasn’t at least a little in love with Craig. We’d been close friends since elementary school, ‘close’ becoming ‘best’ by the end of middle school, and high school just as tightly knit. We were never without one another, and when we weren’t at each other’s side, we were on our phones, texting what we’d have whispered into ears if we were together. Little thoughts, comments, noises, anything- we shared anything and everything. 

It therefore came as a rather uncomfortable shock to find that Craig was, for some reason, not sharing everything with me anymore, and for seemingly no reason.

I noticed he didn’t stay over as long, looked at me longer but turned away more frequently, cut his own sentences off more. I thought I had done something terribly wrong, and it kept me up more than usual at night for weeks, maybe even months! I would watch the glow of my phone’s light reigniting with each text on my bedside table, too afraid to pick it up on the off chance that it was a friendship breakup text that awaited me. I’d breathe a sigh of relief in the morning when I found only group chat notifications, and random pictures Craig liked to send me in the middle of the night; he slept lightly, and each time he would stir half awake, he’d send me some stupid meme or picture that made him think of me, and I saved them all in a folder in my phone. Knowing him more intimately now, I don’t think that he was really a light sleeper at all and instead made the extra effort of his own accord, and that was even more endearing. Maybe it’s selfish of me to think that way, I’m not sure.

~~I wasn’t~~ I can’t remember when exactly this happened, but I remember it was kind of cold outside and we weren’t able to go inside yet because we always got to school ahead of time and they kept the front doors locked. I forgot my coat again and he gave me his hoodie again, and we stood silently together like always, too tired to come up with conversation. We watched our breath create little clouds in the sky and wordlessly started a competition to see who could make the biggest ones. He won because he’d been playing trombone for a while in the shitty middle school band and I was chronically short of breath. We giggled together, and then he kissed me.

It was so sudden I didn’t really know how to react, and it was so quick that he backed away before I could kiss him back. He looked away immediately and started to walk down the sidewalk while he muttered to himself. As I chased him down I had a million thoughts racing through my head- about his distance, his longer stares, his increasing smiles, and what they could all mean. Suddenly, with a kiss, he’d cleared that all up for me. I don’t know if he knew this, but I felt like I was about to hurl (whether from nerves or excitement I couldn’t tell).

Despite my nausea though, I grabbed his arm, and when I caught his face- vulnerable and troubled, and maybe a little scared- I had no other desire but to kiss him again, and so I did.

It was cold and different and scary, but it was good because of who it was with. It wasn’t until I kissed him that second time that I realized I’d wanted him for a long time too. I felt like an idiot, and he told me he did too, for waiting so long. That day was totally checked out and I remember not being able to remember anything I’d learned in school as soon as I left the building.

Because when I stepped outside, there was Craig, at the usual post that we met up at after school, but it was different, and with a new feeling deep in my tummy, we held hands as more than just friends. He kissed me again when we got to my house first, and we texted all night. He told me about how long he’d been into me like that, that he was embarrassed that he hadn’t said something sooner. He apologized for kissing me without asking, and when he did that, I knew I was already taken. We were in sophomore year, and that was that.


	9. My Book of Memories - Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Book of Memories - by Tweek Tucker, 2017
> 
> Craig:
> 
> The contents of this book are for me more than anything, but I’m sure that you’ll like it once I’m long gone and unable to protest. :P It’s important to me that I don’t forget the most important parts of my life, and it happens to be that you make up most of them. I’m sure you’re pretty smug about that.   
> I know it’s probably weird to address this to you when I’m still alive and I don’t know when my time will come, but it just feels right. Hopefully you’ll be able to read these someday and smile. I just want you to keep smiling.
> 
> I love you,  
> Tweek, forever your sunshiny star ✰

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> February 2018 South Park Drabble Bomb entry for "Proposal." Same deal as the last. Enjoy!

**Spring, 2009**

It probably comes as a shock to anybody else who reads this, but I was actually the one who proposed to him first. The key word is first. It wasn’t a big deal, but I’d probably still be embarrassed about it to this day if I didn’t know how much of a dork Craig was going to be about it (yes Craig, you were a dork about it!). 

We were actually still in high school, just graduating and about to move out together so Craig could go to school in the city. I was going to hang back because college didn’t really seem for me and I was fine working as a barista wherever. I’d gotten pretty good at it! Besides, every city has a million coffee shops, and I figured it’d be easy to find a place looking for somebody desperate. The apartment we managed to snag would give us some roommates we didn’t know, which kinda sucked, but it was cheap and we made sure they were cool with two gay guys living together and all that. They all seemed decently respectful at least. One of them was weirdly excited about it and I’m still convinced he was still in the closet or something, but Craig thought he was probably just some weird yaoi fanboy. I’m not sure, but we were only roommates for a year and we never spoke again after we moved out, so it didn’t matter in the long run.

Anyway, we’d been out after a graduation party (Stan’s I think), and had split off from the group to walk along the woods alone. I was ~~kind of~~ afraid there would be an axe murderer in the bushes, but Craig held my hand a little extra tightly to help me feel better because he was smart enough to just know, and it was appreciated. It was dark and hard to see the further away we got from the bonfire everyone was roasting marshmallows around.

There were fireflies at the edges of the woods, which normally would scare me because they were bugs, but that night they just looked pretty. We sat down in the wet grass just to admire them. We were holding hands, like we pretty much always were, and I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand. I made a comment after passing over his ring finger, something like, “It’ll be weird when we have to wear rings all the time, huh?” and Craig looked at me with eyes so wide they looked like they’d pop out. It took me a second to realize what I’d said.

I tried to backtrack, panicking really badly because Craig just looked scared and not super happy and I thought I fucked up, but he shut me up by pulling me into a tight hug that I can still feel. He only gives me that hug when he feels like he’s about to fall apart. I asked him what was wrong, but he just sniffled, and I’m pretty sure he cried a little bit. I spent way too long trapped in his arms thinking I’d just ruined everything. Then he finally pulled back and asked me if I had just proposed to him.

I hadn’t really thought it through until he asked me that, and that was when I really got nervous. I don’t even remember what I babbled about. Something about how he didn’t have to say anything if he didn’t want to, but he cut me off to tell me that it was fine. Then he said “No, I will say something, and that’s that I wanna marry you too.” I remember that one really clearly. Then I started crying and we laughed while we hugged each other, with our asses wet from the grass and the fireflies blinking everywhere like a movie. There weren’t too many moments like these in my life, but I can honestly say that that one was pretty magical.

We didn’t call each other engaged after that because it didn’t really feel official, and that was fine, but I honestly already felt married and I think he did too. Sure, he did the whole one knee engagement ring proposal thing four years later, but all it did was solidify what we’d known since sophomore year- that we were forever, and the rest would soon be history.


	10. My Book of Memories - Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Book of Memories - by Tweek Tucker, 2017
> 
> Craig:
> 
> The contents of this book are for me more than anything, but I’m sure that you’ll like it once I’m long gone and unable to protest. :P It’s important to me that I don’t forget the most important parts of my life, and it happens to be that you make up most of them. I’m sure you’re pretty smug about that.   
> I know it’s probably weird to address this to you when I’m still alive and I don’t know when my time will come, but it just feels right. Hopefully you’ll be able to read these someday and smile. I just want you to keep smiling.
> 
> I love you,  
> Tweek, forever your sunshiny star ✰

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the May 2018 South Park Drabble Bomb prompt "Decade." Not very long, as journal entries tend to be, but it made me tear up a bit writing it so there's that. Enjoy!

We were asked to write about where we saw ourselves in 10 years one day, in English class. It was a pretty typical assignment, really. Something everybody does at some point. Everyone is asked where they see their future going, and in my opinion, that question puts way too much pressure on a child still going through high school! High school is bad enough! 

Anyway- I had been dating Craig for maybe a month when this assignment came about. Obviously, that meant that I was newly in very intense, very dreamy, sloppy, sappy love with him. The honeymoon period, it’s called. I still remember how crazy I felt, for how much I really loved him when I had only just started dating him, but I didn’t want to deny myself the happy butterflies that came with it, so I didn’t. It was so quick that we flipped the switch from ‘best friends’ to ‘boyfriends’ and so was the switch that clicked the rest of my desired future together.

It had been a month, and I wrote that in 10 years, I wanted to be living in a house with Craig Tucker. I moved very quickly in this little fantasy of mine, and I was embarrassed about the assignment and hid it in the trash when I got it back, but I remember most of what I said. I wanted to get married and take his last name, because God knows I hated my old one. I wanted a house that was all ours, no roommates or anything, and I wanted to be making enough money that we could afford it just fine. I wanted Craig to have gone to college to get the dream job he always wanted, and at that point I already knew that college was not really a possibility for me, so I just wished I would be happy doing whatever I was doing. I wanted to have a pet, maybe a cat or whatever Craig wanted. Maybe a child too, one we could adopt that needed a home, but I wasn’t sure if we’d be ready for that yet. 25 didn’t seem like very old, so I put that firmly under ‘maybe.’ Marriage though, and a house, and a pet, the picket fence life- that was what I wanted, and I didn’t know I wanted it until I fell in love with him.

I think that, as I wrote all of it in a hurry to get my new dreams down on paper, I just really wanted to be just as in love with Craig in 10 years as I was then. Maybe that was foolish, and I’m sure my teacher thought it was foolish while she graded the paper, but she gave me a good grade, so it must have been okay. I couldn’t know if I would love Craig for that long, and it was kind of silly to think that after one month when I was only 15 years old.

Well, as I write this, my birthday is two months away. I will be turning 25.

Craig went to college in 2010, right after we graduated high school. He got his degree in 2014. We bought our first house in 2014, too. We got married in 2015, on the windiest possible day of the year. And we were happy.

I wish that I could go back and write about my future in eight years instead of 10.

I may have gotten sick, and we may have lost our house, and Craig his job, and everything we thought we knew about the domestic life we had spent years cultivating, but there’s one thing that CMV can’t take away from us. (I don’t think that my ring can even come off my finger at this point anyway.)

My name is Tweek Tucker now, and forever I will be Tweek Tucker, and it will be etched into my gravestone for as long as that stone exists.

And that, on its own, can make me happy.


	11. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In fifteen minutes, Craig had watched his whole life die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! This is a fill for the May 2018 South Park Drabble Bomb prompt "Memory." Not much more to say. This will pretty much only make sense if you're reading Halfway, so if you haven't done so, take a look over there first! Thank you for your support!

The rush to the hospital had taken too long. South Park had been reduced to exactly one ambulance, and there was no way to get around that it could only hold one bed. They’d taken Richard first, who had already fallen unconscious, with a hysterical Helen by his side. Craig stayed with Tweek, and if it hadn’t been an indicator that Tweek would survive the night, some of him wished he hadn’t taken so long to pass out too. 

“Where’s Dad,” Tweek mumbled, getting woozier by the moment, and he blinked his eyes very slowly. They were glossy and dilated, and his entire body was burning up. Craig had him in an armchair and was on his knees in front of him, having taken both his arms in his own. He gripped Tweek’s forearms tightly. Tweek’s hands were trembling in his lap.

“They took him to the hospital baby, he’s okay,” Craig said, his voice hushed and soft and hurried. His heart was racing, his lungs collapsing, his mind gone blank except for the determination that he had to keep Tweek in the present, right now, and he had no time to waste otherwise. “They’re taking care of him. They’re coming for you too, okay? They’re gonna make you better baby, I promise-”

“I don’t understand,” Tweek said, but at the same time, he twitched violently. It was eerily reminiscent of his youth, a tremor that shook him in a way he hadn’t in eight years. As he righted himself with Craig’s help, his eyes widened with some semblance of fear that he was still capable of expressing. “W-what’s happening to me? Craig-” he whimpered, and Craig hushed him, the sounds of the sea whistling past his teeth while he leaned forward to press a kiss into his feverish forehead.

As he held his lips there, hot and salty from the sweat of Tweek’s brow, he let his heart collapse too, and the anxiety deep in his chest forced its way up through his throat and out his mouth in a shuddering breath that disconnected him from his kiss. Tweek looked up at him with heartbreaking, haunting eyes.

“I thought the virus was g-gone,” Tweek hiccuped, tears quickly filling the wells of his eyelids and dripping down his chin. His breaths were choppy and gasping, near hyperventilation, and Craig let go of Tweek’s arms to cup his face in his hands. His soothing sounds were not enough this time.

“We don’t know that’s what it is sweetheart, we’re going to find out, but it’s not for sure,” he rambled, knowing he was rambling and in a way probably less than calming, but unsure of how to stop. “Just think of your breathing, okay? Deep breaths, baby, deep breaths. It’s okay. It’s just a fever right now.”

“My head  _ hurts, _ a-and I’m shaking like I used to. I can’t remember”—he paused, sucking his lips in to bite them while more tears fell from his reddened eyes—“God, I can’t remember where I  _ am, _ Craig, where-”

“Baby, no-”

“I-”

“Sweetheart,  _ please-” _

“I don’t-”

_ “Tweek.” _

“I’m scared, Craig!” Tweek snapped, wrenching his face from Craig’s hands in a sudden burst of energy. Then, he collapsed inward, and Craig caught him as he bawled, sobbing and shaking and whining between his ragged breaths. “I’m scared, let me be scared,” he cried, followed by a much quieter, much sadder, “Help me.”

Craig took a moment to collect himself, and then he listened—he wrapped his arms around Tweek’s back. He brushed his hand up and down his spine, the way he liked it, and he rocked them back and forth on his knees with Tweek fallen awkwardly into his arms. He shook and twitched and shivered, and Craig was silent, thinking his love and his reassurances into Tweek’s hair and letting him feel as terrified as he needed.

Then Tweek went limp.

“Tweek..?” Craig asked, after feeling his breathing slow to an even, hypnotic rasp under his protective fingertips, and he put his hands on Tweek’s shoulders to push him back and take a closer look at his face.

Tweek looked like a doll; It was the only way Craig could think to describe him.

His eyes were dead, his blinking and breathing so perfectly regulated it looked inhuman. His head lolled to his shoulder, his neck too weak to keep it upright. His mouth was slightly agape.

“Tweek,” Craig whispered, looking for his attention but terrified he wouldn’t find it, and he shifted Tweek back so that he could rest against the back of the chair. He used a free hand to trace his cheek, feeling the remnants of his tears and sweat on his soft skin. He rubbed his thumb under his eye, but Tweek still didn’t speak. He didn’t look at him at all. He was unresponsive.

“Oh, god,” Craig choked, his voice breaking in the middle and dying out with a sharp exhale that emptied his chest so that it matched the way his heart felt. “Tweek, baby, please,” he repeated, his voice still gentle, searching for a sign, but he got nothing in return. Tweek was the despondent poster child for it- CMV had stopped spreading two months ago, but it was unmistakable.

In fifteen minutes, Craig had watched his whole life die.

Craig didn’t cry much, but he wept then, pulling Tweek back into his chest while he coughed and crumbled. His family, satellites bearing witness to their breakdown, would never mention it again. In a way, that made this Craig’s memory alone- Tweek wouldn’t remember it, having been stuck in the haze that endangered him.

He didn’t know how long he rocked that way, allowing the vessel of his body to fill with fear where Tweek’s could not, but finding comfort in the closeness of their hearts. Craig wondered if Tweek would always remember the feelings, even if the moments weren’t there. Maybe he could recall the way his chest ached when Craig’s heart was close to his again, beating too quickly when they embraced. Maybe then he could always remember that Craig loved him.

The ambulance arrived and Tweek was put on a stretcher while a whirlwind of movement blurred past Craig, and a lot of the little things were forgotten since then, but he remembered riding with him to the hospital. He remembered their hands clasped while the paramedic found a vein, and he remembered the way their love mixed with the uncertainty of their future in how white their knuckles turned; Tweek had come back enough to hold his hand.

That Craig had no idea what was in store for him as he sat in a waiting room, surrounded by family but feeling utterly alone, unaware of if he’d be a widower by midnight, or not. There was one thing that Craig had never lost sight of, though, in all of the chaos and pain and confusion that came with Mutation B and the wiping out of half of mankind. Something he was reminded of so strongly when faced with the hospital halls that sometimes transported him back in time to the exact moment it all fell to pieces; he would do  _ anything _ for Tweek.

Anything at all.


End file.
